Lullaby
by tigersmeleth
Summary: He was her Star, and she was the Stardust that made up the universe. Cassian and Jyn have known each other for most of their lives, but only through their dreams. Dreams however, have a funny way of coming to life.
1. Chapter 1

Prologue—A Promise Kept

The air was cool and dry, so different from the lush meadow and white beach that always linked her to him in his head. It was quiet; the only noises were the breeze and the distant noises of the work mines. Cassian shuffled from one foot to another. He was close to her, so close to being with her in the waking world. He should have known who she was from all of the crumbs of information she inadvertently shared with him when she was younger; he could have found her through his networks if he tried hard enough, and taken her home with him. But he was selfish, always wanting to escape back into the dreams. Up ahead, there was a rumble of a prison transport. He squinted his eyes towards the sun. Stardust would be here soon, whether she knew it or not.

"Cassian," Kaytoo broke through his thoughts. "You should stay on the ship and allow me to assist with the extraction. The odds that the prisoner will be hostile is at 85%. There is no need for you to risk yourself when the team and myself will suffice."

"Your odds are a little off, my friend," Cassian's lip quirked. "There is unfortunately, some information that you do not have." He could feel Kaytoo's resentment .

"And you did not see fit to give me that information,"

"I'm sorry," and he was. "But the information was sensitive, and you have to admit, you do have a tendency to spout the first thing that comes into your circuits. Could have compromised a few things."

"Captain Andor," Melshi's comm thankfully cut off any response Kaytoo might have had.

"Report, Seargent."

"Transport in range, all men in position." From his vantage point, he could see the grenades being readied.

"Acknowledged," He moved to the front of the boulder, and waited. He clenched and unclenched his hands.

It was only a minute from the grenades going off to the small figure that barreled out of the door of the transport amidst the yelling and chaos. Cassian caught her in his arms. She stank of unwashed body odor and her greasy hair slipped and caught on the stubble on his face. But she was here, and he was fighting to hold on to her. He caught her right wrist and her left elbow as she tried to break out of his hold—a move that he had taught her. She let out a strangled grunt.

"Stardust! It's me!" She stopped short at the name. "You're being rescued." Her eyes, which had been both wild and determined, became unfocused.

"Star?" she murmured as she struggled against him. "Why are you-?" her eyes rolled up into her head as she sagged against him. He quickly lifted her and began to run towards the ship. Behind him, he could hear Melshi moving his team out before they were discovered.

"Kay, get ready to move!" He shouted.

"Yes, Cassian." Metal fingers softly clinked against metal buttons. "I see that you have extracted her unharmed."

"I told you that your odds were off." He brought her into the cargo hold of the ship, where the benches were. He nodded to Bravo team as they ran into the cockpit. "Strap yourselves in. We're not staying here any longer." There were no replies but gasps and groans.

He threaded his fingers through her hair, and held her face in his hand has he hurriedly strapped her in. She was real.

"Cassian, your assistance is needed." He bit back a groan. He could see that Kaytoo would be providing a fair amount of unwelcome distractions. But they did have to get off of this Force forsaken planet and he was the co-pilot.

"On my way," he yelled up. He leaned towards Stardust and brushed a kiss to her forehead. She stirred, but did not wake.

"I promised to find you," he whispered into her ear. "I've brought you home."


	2. Chapter 2

14 BBY

 _I killed him. I killed a man._ The words echo in his head as he sits in his seat in the extraction shuttle. The team found him, covered in blood not his own, hauling the body with him under the cover of darkness. In the pocket is the data disk from the informant as well as the dead man's credits and list of contacts. For a supposed double agent, the man seemed rather sloppy to Cassian. Then again, the intelligence officer he had gone on the mission with had perhaps been sloppy as well. He wouldn't have died if he had anticipated that the informant might be a turncoat.

"You ok, kid?" one of the soldiers asks him. He hands Cassian a cleaning cloth. "Whatever happened down there, you'll feel better if you get the blood off of you." Cassian nods and starts wiping.

"I killed him," Cassian whispers hoarsely, unable to get the images out of his head, the feelings out of his arms. "Not Korom. The one we had to get the information from. He was going to sell us out. But I killed him and left him there." He hears the soldier shift and sigh. They never quite know what to do with the soldiers who aren't quite adults yet. Grown up in so many ways, but so young in others. He feels a hand on his shoulder and looks up.

"This is war, kid. You do what you have to do to survive and for the cause." The soldier inclines his head towards Korom's covered form. "He knew it too. Stepped in front of that blaster because he knew you had a better chance of getting the information to us. Korom had his orders." Suddenly, Cassian didn't think that the soldier was really just a soldier.

"Who are you, sir?" he asks in the same hoarse voice. He understands the reality of war, has lived it for six years now, but the soldier's speech didn't make him feel any better.

"Captain Draven." The man—Draven—nods at him as he walks away. "You did good, kid. Rest until we get to base. You've earned it, soldier." Once, being called soldier just like everyone else would have filled Cassian with a balloon of pride in his chest, but he felt empty now. There was no way for him to really rest now, not after how he called the man. He just put the back of his head against the bulkhead and stared into space. If Draven came back in and saw him still awake, he made no comment.

Everything is still a blur to him when they land on the base. There is a short debriefing where he woodenly tells his superiors what happened, and hands over the data and credits he's found. They give him the credits as part of his pay and nod to each other as if they've come to a decision. Cassian doesn't care anymore. He just wants to sleep and forget. He's too young to get drunk to forget, and no one will give him anything anyways; they would just report him and there where would he go?

"Andor," It's Draven again. "It's night here. Rest. You're going back into it tomorrow. That's an order." Ah, so it's just another day for him. He wonders if that's how it's always going to be: mission, rest, go to school and training as if he didn't just kill someone. None of this of course, makes it past the tip of his tongue. He only nods and stumbles his way to the younglings' barracks—filled with orphaned child soldiers like him. He's grateful that they are all already asleep—he doesn't think he can face any of them tonight, even if he knows that most of them have done the same.

When he does dream that night, it's a nightmare. He sees Korom step in front of him and wrench the blaster even as the shot hits him in the belly. The informant howls in anger as Korom's falling body sprains or breaks his wrist. Cassian doesn't think, he just grabs the vibroblade he sees sticking out of the man's boot and stabs him with it over and over again. Feels the sickening wet thud as the knife plunges in over and over again until the man lays still and he hears Korom gurgle at him to take the data and run. But this time, there's no adrenaline to help him push things away.

The scene resets and he relives it over once again, and when it resets for a third time, he can't help but start crying and running just to get away from it all. Then he feels a small hand slip into his and something warm push its way in front of him. He blinks for a moment, and the dead man starts laughing. In front of him is a small, brown haired girl with green eyes holding the knife that he had held in his hand.

"Leave him alone!" she shrieks, clutching his hand. He's not sure where she came from, exactly, but he knows that a girl like her shouldn't have the same fate as Korom. Or himself for that matter. He tries to pull her back, but she's stubborn and surprisingly strong.

"Too late, girl," there's a cruel smile in the man's eyes. He's not even talking to the mysterious girl; his eyes are on Cassian. "I'll always be in his head."

The girl shakes her head and lets go of his hand. Cassian stumbled backwards as she flew at the man with the knife. She uses all of her weight to plunge the knife into his neck. "I said leave him alone!" Cassian snaps out of his daze and pulls the blood spattered girl off of the man and carries her as he runs, hoping that the scene is just done and there are no more insane little girls who are compelled to try and rescue him.

Then the world around them dissolves and he tumbles into a soft meadow with the girl in his arms. He takes a deep breath of the fragrant air, feeling like something is cleaning him with each breath he takes. The trembling figure is still in front of him and he waits for her to disappear too, but she doesn't. She just curls up in front of him, trembling much like he had after the first time. But where had she come from? Cassian sighs and holds her the way he so badly wanted to be held until the trembling stops. He finds that he can push the away the nightmare so long as he is taking care of her.

"Who are you?" he asks as he looks into her eyes. Dream or not, he'd really like to know what his mind came up with.

"Stardust," she whispers as she clutches his shirt with one hand. With the other, she touches his hair, his face, his neck—almost everywhere as if trying to convince herself that he is real. But dream people don't do that, do they?

Cassian rolls his eyes. "Your real name." The girl looks up at him with hurt in her eyes and he immediately feels bad. For rolling his eyes at least.

"My father calls me Stardust," she whispers. He looks into the flecks of her eyes and concedes that maybe it's the right name for her. His science teacher always ssaid that Stardust has its own shine and sparkle because of chemical composition and the way light reflects off of it.

"Okay, Stardust." He acknowledges, and Stardust smiles. It makes him feel lighter, as if that one small thing stripped away some of the horrors. He barely catches the end of her question.

"—name?"

"Um," _Cassian_ is on the tip of his tongue, but he can't say it. The name seems wrong to say here in the pristine meadow. Cassian means the child soldier, the boy who kills.

"That's alright," she says and her smile grows wider. "I'll give you a name. Papa says I need more practice with naming anyways. I named all of our house!" Cassian only nods, not quite sure what to do. She looks at him closely, then puts her head on his shoulder with a yawn.

"Star," she mumbles. "You're warm. And bright, I found you right away in that dark place."

His answering laugh is a little bitter. 'I'm not a nice light at all."

"But you are to me!" Stardust has her hands on her hips and he just doesn't have the heart to argue with her. "I-I want to find you all the time, just like I can always find the stars before I sleep."

"But you've only just met me!" he sputters. He's a little flabbergasted. This is all in his head, but something about Stardust feels real to him, and he so badly wants her to be real.

"I know," she shrugs. "But I like you, and Mama says to trust the Force and I think you must be from the Force." Out of nowhere, she produces a ball. "Play with me? There's no one to else to pay with at home." The little lonely quiver in her voices goes straight through him and he can't help it. His head nods with a small smile before he can even thin about it. The ball flies toward him and he catches it. He's not quite sure what to do with it. Stardust stares at him.

"Don't you know how to play catch?"

"It's been awhile." Not since he was six on Fest before the soldiers came; not since he was ten on Carida when they killed his father. She huffs.

"You throw the ball back at me and I throw it to you and run around." It's her turn to roll her eyes at him. "Even McVee knew how to play." Her eyes cloud over for a just a second, but Cassian doesn't ask. Playing just to play sounds nice. It's not as if he's awake waiting for orders.

There's a giggle and he sees Stardust trotting away from him, going deeper into the meadow. He runs and plays with Stardust for what seems like hours and he relishes in the lightness. She throws her arms around him.

"I have to go now, Star. I have to wake up on the farm." She disappears and his eyes open to grey walls, a blaring alarm, and the sounds of his barrack mates waking up. He's a little disoriented and disappointed. _It was only a dream_ , he thinks to himself. Stardust doesn't leave his head though, and he doesn't want her to. He wraps her image around the core of himself and holders there. She was real, at least to him. Perhaps she would come to him again in a dream.

"Andor," he startles out of bed for face a teenage private.

"Yes, sir," he salutes and inwardly winces at his state of undress. He knows he's dwaddled too long thinking about stars and stardust.

"Captain Draven wants to see you in Briefing 5 before you eat in the mess."

"Yes, sir," and the private leaves him. Cassian sadly pushes Stardust into the back of his mind and gets dressed.


	3. Chapter 3

Cassian hurriedly dressed and nearly ran to the briefing room. He was hungry, and had no wish to miss breakfast, even if it was the same eggs and hash as every other day. Before walking through the door, he straightened the clothing he had on and squared his shoulders. A shudder of nervousness ran through him. It had been his first real mission, and he'd panicked at the end of it. What if the higher ups decided to drum him out because he didn't have it all together? No that he would admit that to anyone except for himself and perhaps to that strange girl in his dream, if she ever appeared again.

"Cadet Andor," a crisp voice ordered him in—Draven. Cassian took a deep breath and stepped through the threshold. He looked around the room and recognized only Draven. There was a woman with orange skin and blue and white head tails; a small smile sat on the corner of her lips. Something told Cassian to be cautious of her.

"Sit," Draven commanded with a nod towards an empty chair.

"Cadet Andor," the orange woman intoned. Her voice washed over him. It sounded too young and too old at once. There was a warmth in it as she spoke his name. Cassian looked at her, and thought her to be one of the most beautiful beings he had seen in his short life. She studied him for a moment before nodding to the woman in white.

"I am Fulcrm," she said.

"Fulcrum oversees Rebel intelligence," Draven interjected, seeing Cassian's confusion.

"You proved yourself yesterday to have the instinct and courage for what needs to be done." Anger flared inside of Cassian.

"So that was it?" he spat. "It was just a damned test? Korom died so that you lot could see if I'm ready for—for—whatever?" The sick rose inside of his empty stomach.

"Cadet, calm yourself!" he heard Draven snap, and that command forced him to swallow whatever else he had to say. "You were on a real mission, and everyone knows the risks when they go on one. Korom knew that. We needed the data that the informant was carrying, whatever the cost. Do you understand?" He didn't, in a small way, but he nodded his head anyways.

"Why did you feel it necessary to eliminate the informant?" Fulcrum asked.

"He was going to kill me," he looked Fulcrum in the eye. "I didn't want to die." He could still taste the fear that filled him up until there was nothing left, and felt it start to run through him again. But thoughts of the girl slipping her hand into his pushed it back.

"And the information that the carried?"

Cassian shrugged. "I guess it was important. Korom died for it, so I had to bring it back."

"The loss of life is a grave thing," the woman said. "But as the Captain stated earlier, there are costs to war. Tell me, Cadet, do you think yourself to be a soldier for the Rebellion?"

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't," if he sounded a little exasperated, he supposed he would be forgiven. After all, he hadn't had breakfast yet.

"An army has many types of soldiers, Cadet, and I think you can be shaped into a specific type." Large eyes looked straight through him. "It won't be easy. People will die, and you will have to leave them behind—no going back for them. You will have to keep even more secrets than you do now."

Cassian froze, his thoughts immediately turning to Stardust for some strange reason. He thought back to Korom and the informant and the blaster and the sickening feeling that only went away with the thought of Stardust. A tremble began deep inside of him. There would be no going back after this. But he wanted this, wanted to stop the restless feeling that he wasn't much of anything since Papi died and Mami disappeared. In the edges of his mind, he could feel the hard edges of a key being offered to him. Training in intelligence would give him a glimpse into how things worked, the opportunity to open that door and explore it all.

"Yes," he replied. And Fulcrum's face broke into a small, sad smile.

"Much too young," she murmured. Cassian felt that she wasn't really talking about him. She looked to Draven, who had a sour expression on his face. "If you have something to say, Captain, now would be the time to."

"The boy is too young," he said through clenched teeth. Cassian's stomach dropped. He was right Draven wanted him out, he was too weak on the shuttle to be of much use.

"But old enough to be a cadet at this new school of ours?" Fulcrum raised an elegant eyebrow at Draven, who bit back whatever reply he may have had. "I sense many things about this boy. He will be trained. He is ready, we will have great need of him."

"I can do it!" Cassian piped. He wasn't sure exactly what it was they wanted him to do, something about intelligence, maybe being a spy if he was lucky.

"Don't be so quick to jump into things, Andor," Draven snapped at him. There was something in his eyes that Cassian could not identify. "Or have you already forgotten about that mission you just came back from?" Cassian felt the breath leave his body. The mission. Korom. The blaster. The informant. The blood. Bile rose up in him again and tried to keep it down.

"You sent him on that mission, Captain," Fulcrum rebuked, her voice hard.

"It was a training mission! The boy was never supposed to be that involved—"

"Nonetheless he was, and he completed it, and made sure that nothing could be traced to us." Her voice became softer. "Your concern for his well being is not misplaced, Dravits. But after yesterday's mission, he isn't really a boy anymore."

Images of stardust laughing and throwing a ball at him flashed when he blinked. _Not really a boy.._ not to them, not. Only to Stardust. He opened his eyes to see Draven slightly slumped with a defeated look in his eye. He saw Cassian's stare and his eyes radiated apology. Cassian wasn't sure for what.

"Very well," he acquiesced. "What are your orders?"

"Train him. Make sure he is well versed in everything. He has to be more than a simple soldier now." Draven gave a curt nod. She turned towards Cassian and placed a slender hand on his shoulder.

"I am sorry to ask this of you," she said sadly. Cassian shrugged underneath her touch. "Your training will begin today. You will have to study harder than you will ever have before. My agents need to know more than fighting. It will be anything but easy, this life, but the Rebellion cannot afford to let you slip through." Fulcrum left the room, leaving him alone with Draven.

"Come, boy," he sighed. "Go get your breakfast in the mess, then report to me on the hanger deck. Leave everything behind."

"Yes, sir," Cassian acknowledged, then left. Just like that, he was leaving. His breakfast tasted like ashes, and he found that he wasn't very hungry after all. The way Draven and Fulcrum looked at each other, he was sure that whatever his new training involved, it wasn't going to be with the other teenagers at the base. He looked down at the last of his blue milk. Mama had brought him here when he turned ten, and she was recruited as a medic and a farmer. Fest and Carida were no longer safe for people like her, and he was all she had left after Papi and his uncles died. Of course, he had nothing now, since she left on a recovery mission and never came back. Draven had to come to their small farm on Yavin then, just as he'd finished milking the banthas and was ready to help weed the small crops.

He pushed the memory away. It wasn't a good one. He wondered who was on the farm now. Draven, as promised, was waiting for him next o a small shuttle, two small bags in hand.

"How long am I being sent away for?" He hated how small his voice sounded. He didn't want Draven to think that he didn't have the guts to do this.

"You're not in trouble, Andor," Draven ushered him onto the shuttle, and barked some orders to the pilot. Cassian strapped himself in.

"Then where are we going?" Cassian pressed? He hated not knowing things.

"Another moon in the Outer Rim. It's where intelligence trains new recruits." He handed him a datapad. "You'll be there a little longer than most. They've never had a recruit so young before—there's more that you need to cover." Cassian glanced down at it. He could read enough to know it was some sort of rule book. He bit back a groan. More things to follow, more things to keep track of.

"You want to train for Fulcrum?" Draven raised an eyebrow. "Here's your first mission for her then. Learn the rules of where you're going and blend in." He tapped the datapad in Cassian's hands. "Familiarize yourself with that, then get some sleep. It will be a few hours before we get there."

"What are you going to do?"

"Warn your new teachers." Cassian couldn't tell if Draven was joking or not, so he just shut up and studied the pad until the words blurred together.

He jolted upright when he heard a giggle. There was the meadow again. Stardust was in a simple brown dress stacking blocks together.

"I was right!" She beamed up at him. "You are a star!" He tumbled into the soft grass when she barreled into him. He didn't say anything but he was glad that she showed up again. Too much was changing too fast. At least this thing was familiar.

"Come play!" she tugged him towards the blocks. He shook his head.

"Can't," he replied and held up the datapad. "Have to study this for the new school I'm being shipped to." Stardust wrinkled her nose at him. It would have been kind of adorable if he wasn't a little annoyed with the action.

"What do you need to go away to school for?" she asked. "Don't your Mama and Papa teach you enough at home?" He yanked his hand out of hers and walked away from the center of the meadow, towards the edge of it, wherever that was. His eyes burned.

"They're gone," he threw over his shoulder and began to run. He didn't want to be with Stardust and her toys and her happiness. She had her Mami and Papi and their farm and it just wasn't fair.

"Star!" he heard her small running steps and her pants as she chased after him. She sounded like she wanted to cry too. "Star!" He slowed down and turned around. He hated it when girls—big or small—cried. Like most men, he didn't know what to do with them.

"I'm sorry!" her small arms wrapped around him, and he felt a little better. "I'll help you study. Just—just don't leave. Not before we have to wake up."

"Fine." He sat down and she followed. Wait. He was sure that no one outside of the Rebellion was supposed to know what the school and the rules were for. Spies were supposed to stay secret.

"I can't. It's a secret school," he blurted. "It's important. I'm not supposed to tell anyone!" Then he wanted to hit himself.

"Oh," Stardust was disappointed. "You didn't tell me anything anyways." She played with a blade of grass.

"I was done before I fell asleep." Star tucked the datapad into a pocket. Her blocks looked tempting, and he suddenly found that he really did just want to play. She giggled again.

"I want to make the tallest tower in the galaxy!" she pulled him towards the pile.

"I hope there are enough blocks," he mumbled, suddenly embarrassed. Younglings were the ones who played like that, and he was—he looked at Stardust who just looked so happy as she chattered away to him—he was dreaming. The tower and its accessories were no where near the tallest in the galaxy. But when Star lifted Stardust to put a block up high, he felt like a flying giant.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 3: Interlude

The next year seemed to be a sort of paradise to Cassian. Though he had been safe on the base, well fed enough, and given enough work to feel like he had earned his keep, he had no purpose other than to serve. The soldiers' training, what little of it he had received, taught very little beyond what his Papi and Uncles had already taught him while they lived on Fest and Carida. Simple farmers they may have been then, Papi came from a family of soldiers before the Separatists came and snatched them up.

Here though, here in this new school, he had a new and more solid purpose than just to avenge Papi, Mami, and the rest of his family. From the refugee scholars who had managed to flee execution, he learned as much about the history of the Republic as he could. How had such a grand and glorious thing turned into civil war and tyranny? It was only his first year of learning, and he had many more to go. Slowly, the whys came together, and in his mind's eye, he could see the makings of a large puzzle begin to come together at the edges. By storing the new information into separate boxes in his head he discovers that he loves the idea of the Republic and the ideals it presents to those that live within it, if their chosen leaders govern wisely and follow the rule of law. The Republic of Old, the Republic of millennia ago, that was the Republic he loved and would bring back.

Mami and Papi understood this, he reasoned. It was why they joined the Separatists (they hadn't gotten to the Separatists in class yet, but Cassian snuck into the archives to read. It wasn't easy reading and he had to look up a lot of words, but he did it anyways.) For most who joined, it seemed as if they felt they had no choice if they wanted to fight for a better future for their children.

History was easy to pore through and learn. The other lessons were harder. Some of it was fun—he rather enjoyed learning how to properly fight. It gave him a sense of satisfaction and triumph when he could take on of his classmates and win. He liked to code and cipher—but they were hard work. Hardest of all were the training exercises. Once the adrenaline washed through, he was exhausted and could barely stay awake long enough for the criticism, chores, and a meal in the school's mess area. Cassian was fairly certain that if he couldn't escape to Stardust a few times a week, he would have gone insane in the first year.

The dreams always began in the fragrant meadow, with its soft grasses and tall trees. Sometimes they wandered into the beach to play in the sand and water. But they mostly stayed in the meadow. Stardust was young enough to admit that she wanted to play without embarrassment. Star let himself be pulled along into her made up games and stories. He told himself it was because Stardust was younger and Mami had always said to be nice to the younger ones. He could truthfully say to himself that Stardust came up with all of the good pretend games that he didn't want to wake up from. It was only to practice blending in and taking on another character of course.

A lot of times, they studied together. He didn't tell her everything, of course—not about the real intelligence he learned. But he loved the way her eyes lit up when she finally understood something like a simple comp code. He mostly taught her because he was older, and would sometimes scoff when she went over her own lessons with him. The lessons that Stardust learned were sometimes things that he had already learned—he knew how to read well enough by now and was a little bit ahead of her in maths. He had to admit that despite having a few years on a farm, agricultural science was not something he ever picked up on. He would roll his eyes at her when she started, and would try not to giggle at the way her face suddenly took on a stern countenance as she tried to get him to pay attention. Still, information was information, and a good intelligence officer always filed things away for later. Cassian supposed he may have to pose as a farmer or farming scientist one day and it was just better to be prepared.

"How old are you?" he asked her one night after playing assassins (he was really happy that she liked pretend games like that—he shuddered to think of hen he played prince with her).

"Almost nine." Oh. She was small. She didn't play with simple blocks anymore he noticed. There were more of them, for one, with different shapes and dimensions.

"I farmed with my mother until I was ten," he offered. Stardust's eyes lit up and the gold flecks sparkled.

"What did you grow? Did you have as many chores as me? Did your Mama teach you lessons, too?" The questions came without any room for him to answer. Star shrugged his shoulders and braided some grass between his fingers to help add to the basket she was attempting.

"Herded banthas, mostly. Some grains and fruit to help feed the—" He was about to say Rebellion, but clicked his jaw shut. Too much information.

"The what?" she had stopped her braiding.

"—the good people," he finished somewhat lamely. Some intelligence trainee he was. She gave him a look like she didn't quite believe him, but stopped when she saw the look on his face.

"We just grow food for us. Nobody is around for miles and miles." Stardust began to braid again and Cassian let out a small breath. She wasn't going to ask why he stopped farming.

"Papa used to study and work all the time. Then he hated it and he wanted to stop. I like the farm. It's almost like here." She flung her arm around.

"Do you miss it?" she asked after a minute.

"Wouldn't you?" he countered. He missed being with his banthas, just talking to them, and the quiet of the farm after the noise on Carida. The farm reminded him of Fest. He missed doing chores with his mother when she was actually home. But he couldn't say any of that to Stardust.

Stardust scrunched her nose in response. "No. Maybe…"

"I do sometimes." He said quietly, but didn't say anymore.

"Maybe we can sometimes farm when we grow up."

"Maybe. But I'm already grown up," and he was. He thought back to his lessons. Not the school ones that he shared with her. The ones where he had to learn how to fight and kill. The ones that made him feel sick and just made him feel tired until he saw Stardust and he could forget for a little while.

"Silly," she stuck her tongue out at him. "I meant when I'm grown up with you. Then the Force will help us find one another and we can go on adventures and then back to our farm." He huffed and didn't say anything more. Just continued braiding the grass for her.

Later, when he woke up to another blaring alarm, and ran through another exercise that involved him figuring out how to kill a target without drawing attention to himself, the thought of a quiet farm and a friend to help run it didn't seem so silly after all.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 4: Shift

Cassian found himself in a meadow on a cloudy day. His earlier feeling of jubilation was quickly replaced with apprehension. Tall green grasses aside, this wasn't the place he was used to dropping in on. For one thing, it smelled different—acrid smoke and fuel instead of sweet grass and sea salt—that alone put him on edge. He crouched down behind some of the grass, wishing that he had something in his hands or his pockets that he could use, just in case. Where was Stardust? Was he even asleep? There was a rumbling in the distances, and he heard quick steps coming behind him. Before he could even turn around, the world around him changed with dizzying speed.

He was inside a small structure, tucked away in a corner, hidden in the shadows. He was in some sort of kitchen, judging from the stove and cooking implements. The scent of eggs and vegetables that had been the previous meal wafted over him, and his stomach rumbled even though he had eaten well before getting on the ship. It was simple food, food that family cooked for each other in small portions from meal to meal rather than in large messes as they did in base cantinas. A lump rose in his throat.

"Stardust," Cassian almost jumped out of the shadows. He quickly turned his head and saw Stardust staring at a man with tears in her eyes. She didn't see him there in the corner, she only had eyes for the man kneeling in front of her holding her shoulders. His eyes were her eyes.

"Everything I do, I do to protect you." The man tucked a stray strand of her hair behind her ear. "Say you understand." The words sucked the breath out of Cassian as realization set in.

"I understand." Stardust's voice was choked and confused, but solemn. She looked utterly frightened. Cassian could focus on nothing but her fear. He was asleep. This was Stardust's nightmare.

The world changed again. Outside of the house, beside a wall of jagged rocks.

"Trust in the force," her mother whispered to her as she placed a necklace around Stardust's neck and then disappeared. He watched in silence as Stardust stared after her mother with disbelieving eyes. In the distance, he could make out a figure in white, with Stardust's father, and more figures in black surrounding both.

Suddenly, Stardust is running, crying "Papa!" under her breath. He runs behind her, unsure of what to do. She saved him from his nightmare, but only after he had lived it at least once. He can't really move towards her anyways. It's as if something his preventing him from getting close enough to her to protect her from what he thinks is coming. He nearly trips over her when she drops down in the grass, but she doesn't notice anything but the scene playing out in front of her. They are too far away to really hear what the group of adults are saying. He knows that Stardust knows that, but she watches anyways, unable to tear her eyes away, but too afraid to move any more. Distantly, he hears shots being fired, and sees her mother drop onto the grass, and her father drop to his knees in shock and grief.

Stardust runs. She runs faster than he remembers her ever running in their games. Despite his taller form and training induced stamina, he finds that he has a hard time keeping up with her. Then again, he doesn't have fear pushing him on. She opens a hidden door and quickly slips into the dark hole.

The world changes. He's back in the meadow, hearing her cry for her Papa. He nearly trips over her when she drops down in the grass to watch her parents being taken away from her _again_. But this time, he can tell that she knows that she's in a nightmare loop because the tears are falling down her face and she's holding great sobs in.

"Stardust!" She starts suddenly, and tries to lay in a good punch and kick, but he's faster, and he's the one who taught her how to fight. He holds the sobbing mess of the girl to him and tries to calm her down as the last of the scene plays out.

"She left me! She left me!" Stardust cries as she struggles to go towards the group. Cassian still wasn't sure if one could die and stay dead in a dream, so he just holds on to her as tightly as he can. Those figures in black had masks on, and were most definitely pointing blaster rifles at Stardust's parents. He didn't want to watch them die, and he most definitely didn't want to feel Stardust die. There were two shots, and he saw her mother collapse onto the ground, and her father fall towards her in shock.

He found himself huddled in a small cave with Stardust. His legs felt cramped, and the wet moldy air made him shiver. It was dark, and he only knew that Stardust was there with him from the sound of her ragged breathing. He reached a hand towards the sound, and clutched her small cold hand in her own. She grips his hand with both of her own. It hurts, like she's trying to break his fingers, but he doesn't let go. The world changes.

The air is clean and smells of sea salt. Water laps against sand and the sun feels almost too warm after being huddled in that dark cave. Stardust falls onto her knees, the same way her father did when the man in white came for him. Cassian sits down beside her and pulls her to him.

"I'm here," he whispers into her hair. She begins to struggle against him again.

"Mama left me!" she sobs. "She wasn't supposed to leave me." She tries to break out of his hold. "Papa left with the man in white. They both left me!"

"I promise I won't leave you," he soothes, as much as a thirteen year old can soothe.

"Mama left," she cries into his chest over and over again. Thei air is quiet for a while, with only the sounds of waves lapping the sand to accompany her quiet cries. He remembers when Draven told him Mami wasn't coming back. There was no one left to hold him while he sat and cried in their house. No Mami or Papi or uncles or aunties to put their arms around him and run their fingers through his hair and whisper in Festian that they would be there and everything would be all right in time. Only Draven, standing awkwardly in the kitchen with a heavy hand on his shoulder while he sat at the table with his head down and cried.

"Mine did too." He ignores the small choke in his voice and tightens his arms around Stardust. She looks at him with watery green eyes. "She gave me a list of chores to finish on the farm, and told me that her grown up boy was in charge now. Then she left on a job to find someone and never came back to me." And he remembers feeling so proud that she trusted him to be alone and to keep things running just like Papi did. He doesn't want to remember any more, and brings his focus back to Stardust. She's stopped sobbing, but the tears are still falling and she's shivering.

"Are you still in the cave?"

"No." Her voice is hoarse. "Mama's friend found me. I'm on his ship. I don't know where we're going." She rubs her eyes with her sleeves. "He said that I'm a soldier now, and soldiers don't cry." She wraps her arms around herself and takes deep shuddering breaths to try and stop her tears.

Cassian knows that whoever this friend is, is wrong. Soldiers cry all the time. He saw it when he was new to training—the other kids like him who had lost everything and cried in their bunks after too many drills; the first time teen soldiers came back after their first mission and cried in the 'freshers. Draven said that it was only the crazy ones who didn't cry. The trick to crying was doing it where no one could see you and use it against you. One of the first lessons of being a soldier and an intelligence trainee that he learned.

"Your Mama's friend isn't here to see you cry. I won't leave if you keep crying. I promise I won't leave." She tucks her chin on her knees and cries into her hands. He shifts so that he sits beside her and puts and arm around her, his hand resting on her shoulder. They sit together for some time, until she runs out of tears.

Cassian woke up feeling more tired than when he had fallen asleep. He rolled over in his bed to something wet on his pillow. Tears. A blink later and it all came back to him. A few more shuddering breaths and he pushed everything into the back of his head. There would be time to think about it later when he had more time alone. He sent a silent prayer to whoever was listening, hoping that Stardust knew that she wasn't alone, and that she didn't have to be a soldier all the time. The summons came after morning drills.

"Trainee Andor," Fulcrum smiled with her eyes. Draven, who was behind her, nodded his head.

"Fulcrum." No one else was in the small room. "Captain."

"Your Captain is now a Major, thanks to his exemplary performance in the field," One corner of her lip quirked up.

"Yes, moving on," Draven looked uncomfortable.

"Of course," Fulcrum murmured, but there was no mistaking who was in charge. "Cassian— " he startled at her use of his name. "Your instructors have spoken well of you, it's time to see if you're ready to go into the field."

"You mean, I'm done?" He'd barely been there for two years. His pulse sped up with excitement. Finally, there was something more real than drills and digging into the archives for him to do.

"Force, no!" Fulcrum broke into a full smile at that. "You're barely fourteen. There's still more that you need to learn, trust me." He really tried not to blush.

"Now that your more basic training is out of the way, we need to assess your strengths in order to determine which subsections of intelligence you will train further in." Draven handed him a datapad. "You have a six standard hours to commit the data on here to memory, starting now. You will meet us back here to be taken to the location of the test. Any questions?"

"None, sir." Cassian glanced down to see a map indicating a maze of ventilation shafts and hallways. It seemed as if his mission was to get in and out all the while retrieving information from a terminal that he had to slice into. Where were the exits?

"We'll leave you to it," Fulcrum's amused voice broke through his ponderings. Cassian nodded in acknowledgement and left the room, reading the datapad as he walked to his room. He nearly walked into a wall when he came upon a picture and its caption. Thoughts of his test completely flew out of his mind.

"Death Troopers not likely to be stationed in this location unless guarding extremely high ranked imperial officers or imperial classified missions. Avoid at all costs." Soldiers in black masks with blaster rifles standing in the middle of a meadow that smelled of fuel and smoke. Stardust's mother was killed by the Empire, her father gone, and Stardust said she was a soldier now, with her Mama's friend. He knew there were rebel cells scattered across the galaxy, not all of them part of the Alliance. One little worry floated off of his chest: they were on the same side.

His finger flicked through the datapad, hoping to find more information on the types of officers that the Death Troopers guarded, but there was only that little bit. Everything else was about the compound and hints as to the type of data he was supposed to retrieve. Right, his test.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 5: Interlude II

The Alliance hated having to recruit teenagers, but sometimes they had to. There were plenty enough recruits who were adults, yes. Plenty who used to be soldiers for the Republic who understood what the ideals of the Republic had been, people for whom the Jedi were a living memory rather than whispered stories meant to inspire. But soldiering was a dangerous profession, especially when one was affiliated with any one of the Rebel factions; the Empire was known for everything _but_ mercy. Still, plenty of adults joined for whatever reason, and were trained up as soldiers, pilots, medics, spies, whatever capacity suited them the most. The best recruits though, were those barely into adulthood. Young enough to believe that they were invincible and had the power to change the galaxy all by themselves, but old enough to listen and wrap their heads around truth and use knowledge as a weapon. The Empire could not fall in a day—it was too entrenched in people's lives for that. It would take years, possibly decades, and if people were recruited young, it wouldn't be long before they had seasoned rebels to guide others.

This was why Cassian was sitting in a café in some Mid Rim world, nursing a cup of lukewarm caf and a half eaten biscuit that was definitely better than the nutrition bars and freeze dried meals he had eaten on his way to the planet. The people around him were physically adults, but he could tell that they weren't quite there yet. They were unguarded when they spoke; though their voices were low enough to blend into the din of the café, their hands spoke volumes. Their faces were _young_ , younger than his, with less lines around the eyes. Then again, those who were privileged enough to be able to attend some sort of university and not have to worry about whether they would die when they left the comfort of home would look like children. It stung Cassian in a way, because he so badly wanted more than just a taste of that life, where he could really just be fifteen and only have to worry about pretty girls and when school holidays would finally come.

"I dunno, it just doesn't seem right for those soldiers to just move those people because they're not human. I mean, they've lived here since before the Empire!" A boy gesticulates with his hands in the air, though his voice is but a whisper and Cassian has to strain to catch all of his words. He's agitated, worked up over the injustice of it all. "They're only going to start with the obvious aliens, and then they'll move on to—" Out of the corner of his eye, he could see one of the boy's friends moving his hands to cover the boy's, quickly bringing them down, while the other friends looked around the room in a panic.

"Shhh, Laren, you don't know who's listening!" Cassian took a sip of his caf and crumbled the biscuit between his fingers. He looked the other way at a group of girls on the other side. Pretty enough, but they had a vapid look about them as they were arguing about the perceived injustices of where they were living. He had to hold in a disgusted snort as they complained about one small thing or another. Nothing to do with politics or the latest news. When their conversation turned towards fashion, he quickly left that conversation back to the group of boys.

"Probably no one's listening Kai, we're just a bunch of kids to them," the boy—Laren—groused to his companions.

"Good thing too," Kai replied and leant back in his chair with his drink. "I'd like to live to see adulthood." Cassian made a note to find out more about this Laren. The boy had more depth than most of the people he'd seen so far in this café—he was good material for possible grooming and recruitment if Fulcrum approved.

What was being taught in university in these Mid Rim worlds anyways? The Core worlds? Probably nothing, he mused to himself. Much as he hated the Empire, the people who ran it weren't stupid. Give young people a pretty place to study, tell them exactly what they were going to study, and how not to think for themselves, and give them tasks to make them feel important and part of something bigger, most young people would happily bump along in their lives never knowing that great injustices were being committed because they had been bribed to look the other way. Of course, there were those who believed that they had to make a difference, and they went about it in two ways, depending on what the end goal was. The first way was to go to one of the Imperial Academies for whatever branch they could test into, and work their way up in the various fleets that ran the Empire. The second was to rebel however they could. It seemed to Cassian that Laren was going to be the latter.

He waved a waitress over and paid for his caf and biscuit with a few credits. As he wound his way around the room, he took care to catch Laren's eye and nod at him with a quirk of his lips. _I agree with you._ Laren's eyebrow raised a touch and he nodded back imperceptibly, his friends oblivious to the exchange as they moved on to other topics. Cassian walked outside and sat on a bench that gave him a good eye line to the café and waited for Laren to finish with his friends. He put his foot up on the bench and took out a datapad and gave the appearance of a student enjoying the sunshine while studying.

"Have you identified any potentials?" Fulcrum murmured into his ear through the commlink. She was still in the café having a meeting with a contact. He wasn't quite sure how she managed to stay inconspicuous, being a Togruta and all.

He casually swiped his finger across the screen of the datapad. "One, in the café with his friends. Seemed rather affronted about the latest injustice the Empire committed on this planet."

"Yes, the boy. Are you waiting for him?"

"I don't think he'll be with his friends for very long, he seems to be bored," He glanced around him to make sure nothing was out of place. "We might be able to convince him with some time."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 6: The Good Die Young

The shuttle came out of hyperspace and landed in the hangar bay. Inside, the mood was solemn. The Alliance lost an informant and the planet to the Empire. It was a miracle that they hadn't lost more soldiers. It was also a miracle that they made it back to base without being tailed by any Imperial ships. He gave his report directly to Draven, who looked grave at the loss of the informant. Now that the planet was under Imperial control again, it was even more imperative that they had a reliable source of information.

"Nothing to do but to start again later," Draven sighed heavily. He looked at Cassian's weary face. "Get patched up and take the rest of the day. Fulcrum and I have a new assignment you need to begin preparing for. You will receive the details tomorrow."

"Yes, sir," Cassian replies. Images of the mission flash through his head, but he keeps a straight face. He isn't there anymore. There isn't anything he can do to make anything better. Draven must have seen something in his eyes though, because his face softened and he clasped Cassian's shoulder with his hand.

"Rest. Don't bottle it up if you can help it. The Alliance needs you in good working order." It's the closest to come comfort that Draven can offer him without things getting too awkward. "Remember what I said to you on the shuttle ride when you were twelve. It's not any different now."

Cassian nodded, suddenly feeling very tired, and wanting a meal that was more than just nutrient bars. In the cantina, with a tray of hot food in his hands he spotted Laren and melted into the shadows before he could find him. Laren's eyes were rimmed in red, and his shoulders are slumped as he scanned the cantina for Cassian. He stayed by the table behind the support beams picking at his meal until Laren left. The food seemed less appetizing than before—why did he get to enjoy a meal in relative safety when Alain was still lying on some Force-forsaken planet and Laren clearly grieving? Still, he ate. Supplies are always in short supply, especially fresh food. He should know, he helped Fulcrum to convince a lot of farmers and merchants to smuggle fresh food in to cover what Base hydro and aeroponics couldn't supply.

The datapad in his hand told him that he had to be ready to meet Draven and Fulcrum at 0900. Well, at least they were going to let him sleep in and eat. He made his way back to the room. Just as well that the room was empty. He shouldn't have felt so cut up over Alain—the boy was just another soldier in the rebellion, just another unlucky soldier who had a spectacularly bad day—but he did. His skin felt like it was trying to crawl off of him, and a look in the mirror didn't make him feel any better. There were layers of grime, and streaks of something on his face and clothing. Breaths seemed to come harder to him as the walls closed around him, and the scent of singed clothing and fresh blood enveloped him. He gasped his way into the refresher, and he spent a long time scrubbing himself clean. The bed he crawled into seemed more inviting than usual, and he hoped that wherever he went that night, it would end in the meadow with Stardust.

The scene he enters is a pretty bloody one. That in it of itself isn't a surprise. He's had a few pretty bloody nightmares from skirmishes with Imperial troops: fellow soldiers dying from gruesome wounds, his own wounds, near misses, and the like. Stardust has seen every single one of the nightmares, and it is a wonder that she hasn't tried to run away from it all. Instead, she holds him as he cries and looks at him with wide sad eyes as he raged. She wipes the blood off of his face and his hands and kissed his cheek.

"You're not a bad person," she whispers after he sobs because he wasn't fast enough with a blaster to save one of the soldiers he spent days trading war stories and playing Sabbacc with. Alain wasn't much older than he was, and he was a relatively new recruit that Cassian helped Fulcrum bring into the Alliance last year. Guilt racked him as the scene played over and over again.

"No! No!" he cries as Alain bleeds from stomach wounds, and blood dribbles out of his mouth. Cassian tries to staunch the bleeding, but only succeeds in making his hands more slippery, and they nearly slide inside the hole in his guts. He gives up and hoists Alain up and runs.

Alain gasps air, and stares at Cassian with unseeing eyes. "Ma…ma…" were the only words that Cassian could make out between gasps. Around them, the skirmish continues. He can hear and smell the blaster fire, the singed flesh and fresh blood. There were the sounds of other men, better men than he, dying and wounded. People like him who were dragging the wounded away from the thick of it. He feels Alain grasp his shoulder, and hope surges in him that maybe, maybe he would live. Then the weight in his arms becomes heavier and he nearly drops Alain with his unseeing eyes and still chest.

"Corporal!" a shout in front of him rouses him from his private grief and brings him back to the fight. "Orders from Command, retreat back to the second line!"

"Yes, Sir!" Cassian falls back on his training and drops Alain to the ground, and begins his own retreat with the survivors, blaster rifle out and firing. He looks back into Alain's eyes and has to quell the nausea that rises in his throat. He runs. The world resets to the ground, to Alain's pained gasps and plea for his mother, and those sightless, accusing eyes staring back at him. Cassian didn't care where he was, he dropped down with Alain's body and sobbed. His fault…his fault…

"It not your fault," a soft voice said behind him. He whirled around and saw Stardust. Her face looks tired, and she's wearing fatigues that are dirty and streaked with blood, and there are bits of other things clinging to the folds in the fabric. "I saw it happening, you couldn't have done anything for him." She crouches down next to him and puts an arm around his shoulder. He wants to lean into it, to turn his head and keep looking at something comforting, but the thought of it makes him recoil away from her. He hunches his shoulders and continues to look into Alain's eyes.

"It was. My fault." He clenches his fists and tucks them under his armpits. "He was part of my mission not too long ago. I brought him into the Rebellion, convinced him that he had to fight for the words he was saying." Cassian remembered, only because he liked Alain's quiet conviction about righting the wrongs of the galaxy, like the heroes of the books his mother bought him. His demeanor was so different than that of Laren's. Both quickly signed up and found places in the Alliance. Oddly enough, he found a place with them too, in the rare instance that all three of them were on the same base. He finally turns back to Stardust, who was silently watching him, hands wrapped around herself. "If I didn't bring him in, he would still be alive."

"You don't know that." Stardust has her knees against her chest, and she rests her head on top of them. "S—my guardian always said that if a person chooses to join, then they choose the risk too."

"But they only chose because I talked them into it!" Cassian pushes himself away from Alain, away from her and her sympathetic eyes. "I could have left them alone, found someone else and he would still be alive!"

"Aren't you fighting a war too? The same war I am?" Her voice cuts through the sick anger that courses through him. "Don't soldiers die in war?"

"You don't get it!" He yelled at her, and immediately wished he didn't because she drew her hand back and punched him in the jaw. He probably should have anticipated that. He remembered telling her that she needed to learn how to throw a proper punch in a fist fight, and curled his fingers around her own to show her how to make a fist so that her fingers didn't break. She was nine then, and twelve and a soldier now—it made sense that a punch now would hurt a lot more, especially since she wanted to hurt him now.

"Don't I?" gone was the soft voice and the comforting arm. She lets an angry breath through her nose as she glares at him. "I don't fight in your cell, but I fight too. I know what blood and broken bones and body parts look like." Her voice wavers a little at the end, and Cassian suddenly wonders what nightmare of hers he would have seen tonight if he wasn't so focused on Alain. So far, her nightmares consisted of dark tunnels and loud explosions and a man in white with a blurry face pointing a blaster at her; some small skirmishes where she used her blaster to pick off stormtroopers so that a raid could take place while she stood guard. But those were things that were far away from her. Something had to have changed.

Cassian rubs his jaw and then slowly approaches her with his hands up. "I'm sorry, I didn't—"

"Don't." She orders through clenched teeth. She turns away from him. It was the first time she did. He ignores her and keeps walking towards her even as she scrambles to get away from him. He finally gets a hold of her shoulder and turns her towards him.

"What happened?" he whispers. She shakes her head and tears roll down her face towards her pursed lips.

"You wouldn't get it," she throws his words back at him, and they hurt more than he thinks they should. Her shoulder wrenched itself from his hand and she starts to run. Alain and his eyes seemed far away now. Her hurt was more important. It felt like a long time before he caught up with her. Both of them were out of breath and drained, but done running for now.

"What happened?" he asks again when they had caught their breaths in the meadow.

"I killed people," her voice is dull, the same dull as his own in that first dream. He pushes that away. Stardust now is more important than a memory of then.

"You've done that before," he pointed out. There were dreams of crowded market places and explosions from a grenade that she'd thrown. The screams of the injured had followed her into the meadow that time, and a few other times. He felt her triumph when she told him about taking down Stormtroopers with her out of date blaster that her guardian had given her after they figured out she was the courier; her terror when only more of them appeared and she stuffed herself into a discarded crate that was dark and stank of rotting meat.

"Not like this." He was standing outside of a warehouse now. It was dark, though the area had enough moonlight to make out what was going on. The group there was too exposed, but there was little to no cover. Stardust was helping to move supplies onto some sort of transport. The people she worked with were thin, and their eyes had a feral look about them that only a combination of constant danger and hunger could bring out. Her eyes had them too, and he wondered how many nights she had gone to sleep hungry because there wasn't enough to go around. He peered more closely at the packages they were loading. Food, some medical supplies, mostly weapons. Looking around, there were more food and medicine that could have been packed up, but that clearly had not been the priority.

A shout, a shove at the two people driving the transport, yelling at them to get out of there and back to the stronghold. Blaster fire exploded out of nowhere, and the yelling began. It was some backwater world close to the Outer Rim, not many troopers would have been stationed there. Enough to intimidate the native into compliance, but only just. He'd seen it before, natives of the planet would be used to be front line security in installations such as this. It would have made raiding for supplies easy enough, and those supplies would probably have been used to further disrupt Imperial workings at least for that particular planet.

The people that came out of the dark wore no Imperial uniforms, no white or black plates of armor. Just crisp uniforms that indicated some sort of security team guarding the Imperial warehouse.

"Collaborators!" That was the voice of a teenager. Cassian gaped at the group. About a third of them were adults, the other two thirds were teenagers, and Stardust the youngest one of them all.

"Eliminate them, then get otu!" The command was given by one of the older soldiers with Stardust. The security forces came closer and suddenly, blasters weren't the only option.

Stardust holstered her blaster and before Cassian could blink, had two truncheons that seemed to be almost has big as her extended and began to fight. It was brutal and bloody. The others continued to fire blasters for as long as they could, others took out vibroblades and other assorted bladed weapons and began to fight their way out. Cassian caught the shocked look in her eye when her truncheon first connected with someone's head, and the skull caved into a bloody mess of brain and bone. She stared at the still body for a moment before she struck out at the other security forces that were beginning to converge on her. It was one bloody strike after another, and most of the time, it took more than one hit with her truncheons to bring them down. She only stopped when the order to move out with the others was given, and she ran. She nearly tripped over the body of a girl with red hair not much younger than her and stopped in shock, crying out a name before being jerked back into running.

Cassian ran with her, taking hold of her hand and leading her towards the meadow that appeared at the edge of his vision. When they reached it, she fell to the ground and promptly heaved everything that was in her stomach, and began shaking. He wiped her mouth with her sleeve and put his arms around her and pulled her away from the mess on the ground.

"I killed them. They weren't even Empire, not really, and I killed them. I felt their heads crack and I felt them _die._ " She looked from her shaking hands up to his eyes. "How many of them just needed the credits to feed their families? How many papas did I take away?"

"You said we were fighting a war earlier," he said softly and rubbed her back. "The security forces knew they were working for imperials, whatever the reason." She didn't hear him.

"I begged him to let me go! I want to do more than just patch people up when they come back from a raid!" She gets up and starts pacing in a small circle. "He taught me how to fight, told me that he was surprised that I already knew how to fight some. I'm just as good as the other teens there—I got out, didn't I? But—" her face crumples. "I've never seen someone die because I crushed their bones to nothing. Or get sprayed with their blood because I bashed their heads in, and it's awful!" He gets close to her again, because suddenly she just looks like a kid, so different from the whirling dervish in the nightmare.

"So now you know. I kill people," she tries to wriggle herself away from him, but he holds her tighter.

"I'm sorry," shame tinged his voice. "You do get it."

"I told you," she choked out. "I told you." She buries her face in his chest and began to cry in earnest. "I'm not allowed to cry out there. Never. Crying only makes you weak , but I can't stop!"

"You're not out there, and neither am I." There didn't seem to be anything more to say, so he just held her as they cried together.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 7: Interlude III: Stardust

Jyn burrowed in between the blankets, trying to eke out whatever warmth could be had from the thin layers. Unlike the previous planet they had set camp on, this one was the type of damp that just seeped into the bones and stayed there. It rained every few days, and she began to wonder if she would ever know warm and dry again. Between trying to stay alive during skirmishes with stormtroopers and collaborators, and just trying to stay alive with limited resources period, Jyn was more than ready to escape into the warmth of the meadow, even if it sometimes came with bloody nightmares. At the end of it all, Star was always there, and he fed her in a way that ration bars and cantina meals never could.

The day was a normal enough day for the Partisans. In general they consisted of more raids on Imperial warehouses (more bloody workers at the ends of her truncheons, but she was used to the sight now, so no more nightmares at least), more fights with stormtroopers, more trying to get Saw to talk about what was supposed to happen to the civilians after they left each planet. Saw always evaded that last question, telling her that "at some point, they have to fight for themselves if they want to get out of it badly enough". He thought he could hide it from Jyn, but she saw the way mothers threw their children behind their backs and into houses every time a hint of Partisan walked by. She heard the Imperials rally civilians into collaboration simply by mentioning that the Partisans killed so many of their population in terrorist attacks, and that the Empire was simply there to protect them.

"They wouldn't be working with the Empire if we were just more careful with who we hit!" Jyn kept her voice low, but the fire that Saw had nurtured was there. Her clothes were covered in blood and grime. She couldn't get the image of the little girl out of her head. The child had been in the market with her mother when the explosions rocked the stalls. She was all brown eyes, brown hair, and smiles that turned her eyes into half moons because her mother had given her a skewer with treats. Her mouth was open to taste the sweets when she suddenly flew into the air and into the stone wall behind her. Jyn had been so focused on watching the child with her carefree smile that she had forgotten about the attack on the garrison of stormtroopers that were due to be at the market that day. It was something that she shouldn't have forgotten—it was the first time that Saw had her directly out with the rest of his troops rather than scouting at the edges. But the girl was just so beautiful and so happy with her mother that Jyn couldn't help but to stop and stare.

"No!" the scream tore from her throat as soon as she saw the girl flying. Immediately, blaster bolts flew through the air, striking people left and right. She had her own blaster out and shot at the stormtroopers that flooded the square in response to the explosions. The Partisans crawled out of the dark places of the market like insects swarming to devour a tasty morsel of food.

The girl had been separated from her mother by the force of the explosion. Her little body was a crumpled heap at the bottom of the wall, partially covered in broken bits of wood and food. Jyn pulled the rubble off of her and gently cradled the child to her chest. The beautiful brown eyes were closed, and a chubby hand still clutched at the stick of treats. A small, shuddering breath later, she was gone.

"No," Jyn quietly whispered as she held the girl. A scream next to her startled Jyn. It was the girl's mother. Bloodied and limping, the mother made her way towards the child. Sobbing, she tore the little girl out of Jyn's arms.

"You! You terrorists!" she shouted into Jyn's face. "You're no better than the stormtroopers!" Jyn felt the sting of her hand on her cheek. Any other time she would have fought back and continued on, but she found that she could not deny a mother grieving over her child. Almost too late, she saw Maia's blaster pointed at the mother's retreating form, and jerked on Maia's arm, deterring the gunfire.

"What the kriff, Jyn?" Maia yelled about the noise. "She's not with us, she'll only work against us!"

"Leave her alone, Maia, find another target." Jyn was suddenly too tired to yell back. "Her girl died in front of her. Let's go." And she was back into the fight, her blaster taking down troopers left and right, her truncheons an extension of her own anger, making satisfying crunching noises when they found their white targets.

"This is war, Jyn, and you are a soldier," Saw's harsh voice shook her out of her memories. "There will always be collateral damage in the fight. The Imperials don't set up very far from native populations for a reason. You were taught why."

"Because the Alliance refuses to target Imperial troops that are stationed in areas with a high civilian population, so the Empire think that they can use them as human shields. We have to hit the Empire no matter what in order to win." Jyn replied. Saw looked at her when he heard the lack of emotion, and sighed.

"Child," he began and put his arm around her, a rare gesture of affection given only when absolutely no one else was around. "We are not the Empire, we don't target the innocent just to make a point. But innocents are everywhere, and we can't save them all. We just save who we can by striking where we can, to hurt the Empire in whatever way we can to weaken them. There is no room for sentimentality; that's how wars are lost, and we can't lose this one, soldier. Push it away, save it for later, when it's all over." Jyn knew that there was no more arguing with him at that point, so she only nodded.

"Did you eat?" She nodded again. "Good." Saw took her chin in his hand and looked into her eyes. "You look tired, child. Sleep while you can. You will need to help deliver messages early tomorrow."

So Jyn found herself on her sleeping roll with her back up against the wall, facing the door. The compound was about as secure as it could get for the evening, and the others her age were already fast asleep, coddled by the warmth of the heater in the room. She tucked the blankets around her, prayed that she would see the meadow at some point, and drifted off to sleep.

When she became aware again, she was back in the marketplace, but it was quiet, no sounds of the skirmish, just the breeze knocking over various pieces of debris. The little girl was back in her arms, tucked into her chest, and she almost looked like she was asleep. Her mother was nowhere to be found; they were alone. A sob wrenched from her throat and she buried her face into the crook of the little girl's neck, the sticky sweet caught in her hair. There were voices floating about in the air. "Stormtrooper," they whispered, over and over again. The sounds surrounded her, suffocated her. She clutched the child closer to her and cried harder.

"I'm not!" she cried into her neck. "I'm not! I didn't know!" Louder and louder the voices came, and she found it harder and harder to breathe. How many? She wondered. How many children were lost because of Saw's "collateral damage"? How many mamas and papas gone because they just happened to be in a marketplace when the Partisans decided that today was the day? But surely Saw knew, and tried to make sure that the innocents could get away; only the collaborators and Imperials were truly guilty. Didn't he?

Bloodied people from the marketplace appeared and began to converge on her, pointing accusing fingers. Jyn tried to back away from the mob, and her back hit the stone wall. The girl's mother emerged from the crowd and ripped the girl from her arms. Again, she felt the sting of her slap, and again, she just let it happen. Didn't she deserve it? She couldn't save the little girl. She felt her breath catch in her throat as the rest of the crowd came closer and closer. She wanted to run, but where could she go? Her back was to the wall, and escape was cut off. She wanted to cry that she would try harder, next time, to make sure that the women and children around her were going to be as safe as she could make it, because she saw that the mothers always came back for their children, and the least she could do was to at least try to make sure that they could go back.

"Stardust!" a pair of arms wrapped around her, and she sobbed with relief. She wrapped her arms around him and breathed him in. Slowly, her shaking and crying stopped as he ran his fingers through her hair, whispering soothing words in his native language. He was musky and solid, and clean. She could see his smooth face and dark eyes looking down at her in concern, even if her eyes were closed and her face smashed against his chest. There was a flutter of something deep inside of her as he smoothed her hair that she pushed away because to was just too strange for her to comprehend at the moment.

She opened her eyes and saw that they stood at the edge of the meadow, where the white sand of the beach met the green grass of the meadow. She stepped away from Star and took a deep, cleansing breath, letting the salt of the air surround her. Star's hand took hers, and tugged her towards the sea. When they reached the lapping water, he let her hand go, and took off one of his layers (why is he always dressed in layers, she wondered to herself) and dipped it into the water. Silently and gently, he washed the grime and blood off of her face and hands, and wiped down her clothing. As the dirt came off, she felt lighter and lighter. Her skin tingled where he wiped, and her Star seemed to grow bigger and brighter the more he washed away her nightmare.

"Better now?" he asked. She nodded at him and sat on the sand, mindlessly making patterns with her fingers. He sat with her, close, but not touching, just waiting for her to tell him what had happened, if she wanted to. It was their routine now, whenever the nightmares came. There was no reason for it feel different with her this time, but for some reason, it did. It frustrated her a little bit, as she couldn't even explain why she felt different.

"We were supposed to attack the garrison of soldiers at the market; my commander said it was to rally the natives into action by showing them that there are ways of fighting back, that they didn't have to live under the Empire if they didn't want to." Her voice was detached. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him nodding in understanding. "It sounded exciting to me at first because I got to be the in the middle of things again, but I forgot about who goes to the market in the middle of the day." Her voice caught in her throat, and she felt Star's hand hold hers. She continued to look into the sea.

"There was a little girl—the most beautiful little girl I've ever seen, all brown eyes and smiles. She couldn't have been more than two or three." Her breaths came faster as the memories came back to her. The hand holding her own tightened, and a thumb ran over the back of her hand. She gripped his fingers and continued. "The grenades started exploding, and we were too close to it. She—she—she flew." She looked at Star, who was blurry through the unshed tears. "Her mother came back for her, and said that we weren't any better than stormtroopers. She came back for her!" Here again, the tears began to fall, and again, Star quietly wiped the tears away. She looked at him again, with clearer eyes. Her breath caught in her throat again, as she realized that Star was, at that moment, the other most beautiful thing she had seen. In the dreams, he never questioned, never judged, he was just always there.

"It's not easy," was all that he said, because really, there wasn't anything else to say.

"No," she replied, and looked back out to the sea.

"Come on," he tugged at her hand. "The water looks nice, and some swimming will help take your mind off of things, I think."

She tugged her hand back, suddenly panicked. The water did look very pretty, but…

"I don't know how to swim!" she blurted out, embarrassed and flushed. His eyebrows rose in surprise.

"May as well learn. You and your group might find yourself on a very wet world."

Jyn snorted. "My guardian likes worlds that are dry. Or at least don't have enough water that requires everyone to learn how to swim."

"Just give it a try," he cajoled, eyes sparkling. "Please? For me?" Her heart fluttered again, as she tamped the feeling down even further.

"I suppose when you put it that way," she reluctantly said, and slowly made her way with him towards the water. They had waded in the shallow depths before, but never beyond that. They walked into the water until the water reached her shoulders. Star spent the rest of the time teaching her how to float and how to kick. Slowly, she began to smile and giggle at his antics in the water, and she caught the relief in his eyes. He answered back with a small smile of his own, eyes hidden under a curtain of dripping wet hair.

When she woke up, she still felt the ache of the little girl and her mother, but it didn't threaten to consume her the way it did when she went to sleep. She pushed it deep into one of the corners in the cave in the back of her mind. The little girl and her mother would always be there, and she would try very hard to make sure that the innocents suffered as little as possible, but living with Saw meant that she couldn't forget the bigger picture of war and death, or she would be cast out like the others. For him, the ends justified the means. Her stomach tightened in regret at what she knew had to come, but she saw Star's face, smooth, concerned, empathetic. He had seen things too, she knew. She saw all of his nightmares, and held him through them when he needed her to, just as he held her when hers came. She still had no idea where he was, or who he was, only that he was a rebel like her, and he was always there when the dreams came.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 8: Fade Away

He was polite enough to the pilot who picked him up, but he didn't care how fast they got away from the damned planet so long as they got away. Once he could politely get out of the cockpit, he bolted. The door to the miniscule refresher on the ship couldn't open fast enough for him. He flew to the toilet and heaved. If there was time to process things immediately after completing his mission, he would have done the expelling sooner, but he had to get out of there before tensions imploded in the seedier section of the city. It wasn't that he was really in any danger of having his cover blown, it was just that he couldn't push back the bile that rose into this throat anymore and pretend to desire something that utterly revolted him. When the opportunity to leave came up, he left—fled to the other side of the city and waited on pins and needles until his pilot came

.

The taste was awful: a lingering mixture of acid, sweat, bitter musk, and alcohol. He hurriedly found his toothbrush, put as much of the cleaning paste on it as he could, and scrubbed his mouth until his gums bled and his tongue couldn't take the rasp of the bristles. Like on any Alliance ship, water was rationed, but it was hot and better than nothing. He saturated his towel with soap and scrubbed himself raw until the water cut out. As he dried himself, he imagined that he was sloughing the outer layers of his skin off, shedding the phantom remnants of the officer he had serviced. Finally, when there was nothing left to do, save for putting on a clean shirt and pants, he walked to his bunk and lay down. It was quiet on the ship, except for the music that the pilot piped through the system and the soft thrumming of the engine.

"I am Cassian Andor," he whispered to himself. "I am Cassian Andor. I am an officer with the Rebellion." He wrapped the thin blanket around himself and turned his head into the pillow. "I had a mission to complete. There is no shame in completing a mission by any means necessary if it will save lives." That much was true. The data he managed to copy from the stick the officer carried in his pants meant that at least. Still, he couldn't get the feeling out of his mouth. It was as if his jaw would never close on its own again. At least he was able to inject the man with a sedative as he emptied himself into Cassian's mouth. He didn't have to go any further other than shift things around to appear as if more had happened, and the officer simply blacked out from the intensity of it all. Cassian closed his eyes and tried to forget the way the other man's hand ran up and down his torso, stopping just short of his groin; the way hands forced his head downwards while a mouth muttered and groaned.

"I am Cassian Andor." But who was Cassian Andor, really? Cassian Andor had one more shred of innocence torn from him. It wasn't that Cassian was a virgin. Of course not. He was seventeen and a soldier, well aware of the short life expectancy of a soldier-spy. If he was going to die in the line of duty, he wasn't going to die without experiencing some of the nicer things in life. So before going on this mission, he had found a girl that he got on well with and thought to be quite pretty and they went all the way. It wasn't quite as satisfying as he thought it would be, but it certainly was pleasurable enough and he could see what all of the fuss was about. And really, he had nothing against two people of the same gender going at it, he just didn't swing that way. Not that the mission would have been any more pleasant if the target had been female. Well, it might have been slightly more pleasant, but not really. It wouldn't have stopped the feeling that he had sold a part of his soul and dirtied himself beyond any cleaning.

"I am Star," he mouthed silently. "I am friends with Stardust. I belong to the meadow, and to the water and the sand." He continued his silent chant until he fell asleep.

When he came to, he found himself in front of the brothel. He could make out the outline of the officer's form through one of the curtained windows. There was also another shadow, and it sat lower—himself. Cassian swallowed the bile that threatened to come up again and squeezed his eyes shut. Stardust was thirteen. He was fairly sure that she was aware of the seedier aspects of society, but he really didn't want her to know about his role in it, however brief it was. Her footsteps were light and coming closer. He took a breath and willed away the shadows. His time with Stardust was all light in the dream world, even with the nightmares, and he didn't want this type of darkness to encroach upon it. The building was silent and empty. He breathed a sigh of relief.

"Star?" Stardust's voice was soft and welcome. It blanketed him and held him. "Where are we?" She looked around the quiet street and the worn out building fronts. Her eyes followed his to the window.

"Nowhere," he choked out. "Just someplace a mission took me." She tilted her chin to look him in the eye.

"We wouldn't be here if this was nowhere to you."

"It's nowhere you should be near. Not if I can help it." He swallowed past whatever was in his throat. Please, he pleaded silently, let's go to the beach.

"Well you can't, so try again." He tried not to flinch at her blunt tone, or the fact that she was right.

"I can't. Not right now." The voice that he tried so hard to keep steady cracked about halfway through. There was a gentle hand on his arm.

"Alright," she conceded, and led him away from the building. Eventually, the road became less firm, and sand crunched under his shoes. When he finally reached the water, he sat and listened to the soft lapping against his chest. It was the most peaceful he had felt since the mission began. The water was very cold, unlike the hot shower he had taken before arriving here. It felt as if the dirtiness he felt from what he had to do leached out with his body heat. He was beyond the point of shivering now, because he was beyond feeling what the mission forced him to feel.

The ripples in the water next to him made him look up. While he was thinking and wanting to get away from it all, Stardust had waded into the water and sat. She wasn't exactly next to him, but close enough that he could feel small tendrils of warmth emanating from her.

"You don't have to tell me about it," she said softly as she wiped the tears away from his eyes with her small hands. Small fingers reached down and rested at the crook of his elbow. "But you can cry about it if you need to. With me." Her own eyes were bright, and he could see a tinge of pink beginning at her cheeks from the cold of the water. Still numb from it all, he only nodded and let more tears fall. He made no sound except for the small quick breaths that escaped him. There was something that he had lost, but could not place what it was.

The ripples began again, only stronger and faster than before. He turned towards Stardust and saw that she was shivering and her lips had a distinctly blue coloring to it. The fingers on her elbow were tense, as if she was trying to hide how cold she really felt. Guilt surrounded him with the water, and the temperature of the water drove through him like knives. How long had she'd been sitting in the painfully cold water with him?

"Stardust, I'm sorry," he murmured as he pulled the hand on his elbow and drew her towards him. With one arm around her, he hauled them both out of the cold water. He reveled in the warmth of the white sand even as the grains stuck to him everywhere.

"I'm—I'm alright," her teeth chattered as she spoke. She leant into him and let him hold her. She seemed to be warming up quickly enough. Her face and hands were pinker than they had been a few moments ago in the water. He looked at her hard and saw that for all the nightmares that she had seen with him and had to do, Stardust was still innocent in so many ways. Violence had taken so much from her, but there was some hope and lightness in her that was still there that wasn't in him anymore.

"I can't tell you what the mission was or how I had to do it," he shook his head at her when she opened her mouth to argue with him. "Please—I can't relive it. Not now. It was horrible, and I never want to have to do that again, but if I have to do it again, then better me than any others." The look in her eyes was enough to make him feel a little less sick about himself. He didn't know where she was fighting, but they were fighting the same fight and if he had to do awful, nasty things, to hope that she wouldn't have to because he did them, then he would. Better that he took those things on, rather than her. He needed her to come back to when he slept.

"You're good, you know?" she sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Unfortunately for her, it left a trail of sand across her face. He was still too tired and a little too numb to really smile at her, but he let his eyes soften and his mouth relax as he looked at her.

"I'm not." Not after what he did. Not after what he knew he would have to do later. As a child, he'd been relatively shielded from the more brutal aspects of intelligence work because Draven needed him for recruitment or because his mind was needed to help decode imperial encryptions. He'd caught enough glimpses from other intelligence officers coming back from missions to know that darker things awaited him. "But thank you anyways." Stardust's fingers drew squiggles in the sand as she shrugged and looked away. Out of their own violation, his fingers started drawing too. The feel of the sand slipping through his fingers soothed him.

"Have you ever heard of a story called 'The Octave Stairway'?"

"Not a lot of time for stories after my father died," he confessed.

"Same. But I watched this one all the time when I was little, when Papa worked late." As small wistful smile lit her face. "Mama taught me how to read using it."

"Tell me the story?" He liked seeing her smile. It reminded him of the why.

"Haven't really thought about it since," her voice trailed away and her face fell a little, but she continued on. "Anyway, there was a boy named Brin and all he wanted was to go home…"

Cassian laid back and sprawled out on the warm sand and closed his eyes as Stardust told the story. He let her voice carry him up and down the stairway and feel the "welcome home" that Brin felt when he reached the end of his journey. He felt the world start to shift and himself become lighter and knew he was coming to back on the ship. His heart dropped a little to know that the dream was coming to an end for now. Little fingers ghosted across his forehead, he thought as the grains of sand swept away with the beach.

A/N 1: *Cassian is 17, Jyn is 13

*Chapter song: Ghost River by Nightwish

A/N 2: First off, big thank you to Dancingactress24 for her patience and betaing.

RL decided to pour instead of rain. I had my baby earlier than expected and we moved into a new house the week after he was born, so things have been absolutely crazy here for the past couple of months and totally not conducive to writing. Also, this chapter and the next came as an absolute surprise. I was utterly shocked when this chapter came out of my head.

Thank you to everyone reading this who patiently waited for two months for an update! The next couple of chapters should be coming out in a somewhat more timely manner now that baby is letting me sleep a little more .


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 9: In Sickness and Health

When Cassian finally woke up, the first thing he registered in his mind was that he most certainly did not want to be up. He preferred the almost oblivion of sleep. It took some effort, but he quelled the nausea that rose in his throat and hauled himself out of bed. Glancing at his datapad, he saw that Draven had scheduled a meeting with him in two hours. A hot flash of anger rose in his chest. He tried to tamp it down as best as he could, but found that it wouldn't go away this time. Somehow, he resisted the urge to throw the datapad at the wall, and went to look for an unoccupied refresher instead.

"Andor," Draven began the meeting. "How are you holding up?"

"Fine," Cassian replied through gritted teeth, wishing that Draven would just dispose of the pleasantries and move on with the meeting. The faster the meeting ended, the faster he could go to one of the training rooms and work off some of his anger. Draven peered at him and Cassian squirmed.

"Answer that more honestly this time," he quietly commanded.

"With all due respect, sir, you don't get to ask me that." Cassian got up to leave. He thought he was here for a debrief, not a therapy session. A heavy hand on his shoulder forced him to sit back down.

"As the person you report directly to, and one who has followed your career since you joined I might add, I am well within my right to ask." Draven sat back down on the other side of the table. Cassian blew his hair out of his eyes and crossed his arms. He didn't want to say anything, but Draven looked like he was going to wait him out, and he really just wanted to leave already.

"I don't want to talk about it," he muttered and looked away.

"The intel you gave us is good, we have our people on it," Draven stated as he looked down at his datapad.

"It better be," Cassian snapped. Then he bit his tongue. Just lay out the facts and then go. No need to add anything else to it.

"I'm ordering you to go on leave for the next week," Draven continued, as if Cassian hadn't said anything.

"I'm perfectly capable of going on another mission!" Actually, another mission would be the thing to make him forget the last one.

"Don't be stupid!" Draven snapped. "You need time to recover."

"There's nothing to recover from!" Cassian roared, jumping out of his seat. "You said so yourself before I left, it was just another intel mission!"

"The objective, yes. The mission parameters, no." If Cassian deigned to pay attention at that point, he would have noticed the way Draven's voice softened minutely, and heard the faint regret behind it.

By now, Cassian was too angry to care about any consequences, so he just yelled. "YOU WERE THE ONE WHO SAID THAT I WAS OF AGE, SO LIKE A GOOD LITTLE SOLDIER, I PACKED MY BAGS AND SOLD MYSELF TO THAT PIECE OF BANTHA SHIT." Well, he felt better. Except that he yelled at his direct superior officer. He clenched his fists. "Sir."

But Draven didn't react as expected. Cassian thought perhaps if he were anyone else Draven would have been colder towards them, and sent them off with more discipline than a slap on the wrist.

"You volunteered for the mission," he quietly reminded Cassian. "I warned you of the consequences, and you said that they did not matter so long as you managed to extract the necessary information." There was no sympathy in Draven's eyes, only a tinge of sorrow. Cassian opened his mouth to make another comment, probably one that he would really regret, but Draven cut him off.

"Take a week to decompress, Andor; talk to someone discreet, or at least work it out somewhere, in some form. That's all I can give you." He raised his hand as if he was going to put it on Cassian's shoulder. The hand went down by his side when he saw Cassian cut his eyes to the floor and stiffen.

"Fulcrum and I need you for another mission. It won't be quite so unpleasant as the last one. We will give you the parameters at the end of your break if we can get the Council to approve it. It's too important to send not send someone we trust completely, and we can't send you in if you can't cope with the methods of the last mission." Finally, Cassian looked at Draven again. His eyes were back to their normal hardness. In a way, it was comforting to know that some things just didn't change.

Contrary to where most people would have gone to "work things out", Cassian headed for the improvised kitchen that some soldiers had set up after a stop in his barrack for supplies. From his bag, he pulled out his mother's flavoring box with its assortment of dried herbs and spices that he managed to procure during his more relaxed missions, a container of the plain food that was served in the morning, and some flatbread that he managed to trade for on base. As he opened the flavoring box, he breathed deeply, allowing the familiar scents of his mother's cooking to envelop him. With deft fingers, he scooped some of the meat and vegetables into the pan with a little cooking fat, and threw in a combination of flavorings that he remembered his mother using. The smell of the cooking food reminded him of just how hungry he was—he hadn't felt much like eating in the past couple of days. He scooped the filling over the flatbread and rolled it up, then quickly put the makeshift kitchen to rights before sitting down on top of a crate and slowly bit into his food. Then nearly choked at how spicy he had accidentally made it. At least it had more flavor than the plain cantina cooking that the Alliance cooks were so fond of.

Later, a few hours at the gym trying to chase away images from the mission left him exhausted. He skipped the midday meal and collapsed into his bunk instead. A groan and the smell of vomit greeted him when he got to the meadow. Now, Cassian could stand most smells. He'd been to plenty of filthy places that were quite fragrant in their own particular way. He was fine with body stink, blood, rotting garbage, and the like. But he couldn't stand scent of spoiled bantha milk and someone else's vomit. It was just the way his day was going that he happened to be greeted with both. He pushed down the remains of his breakfast as it threatened to come up. It wasn't just anyone lying in the meadow and groaning, it was Stardust, sweaty and pale, clutching her belly. She'd moved far enough away from her retching, but was curled up face down in the grass.

"Stardust?" He turned her over and pressed his lips against her forehead. Burning hot and she was shivering. "Fever." He looked around for something to help cool her down. There wasn't anything nearby but the ocean beyond the meadow. "I'll soak my outer shirt in some of the water. I'll be back soon." The clean salt smell of the ocean took away his own nausea and he hurried back to Stardust. She smiled at him a little and looked at him through her glassy eyes.

"Sorry," she whispered. Her face relaxed as he patted her face with the damp shirt.

"How long?" he asked.

"Not long," she evaded. He thought back to their last couple of meetings. Stardust had seemed alright the previous night, except for being a little pink of sitting with him in the cold—oh.

"How long?" he asked again, more firmly this time. She looked away from him with a guilty look in her eyes.

"Since yesterday." He took his jacket from the ground and wrapped it around her shivering figure and held her to him. Her teeth chattered together as she spoke.

"When you sat in the water with me?" He pressed, but knew her answer before she spoke.

"A little before falling asleep yesterday," she replied quietly, his chest muffling her answer, but he could make it out. He let out an angry breath.

"Why didn't you say anything?" He could feel her wince.

"You felt worse than I did."

"But—" he began to protest.

"Please," she pleaded as she shifted to look at him. "Tell me something nice. I don't feel good, and I don't want to fight with you, not now. I already had to with my father." Now Cassian was just confused.

"I thought your father was gone?" Stardust quirked one of the corners of her mouth and shrugged as she pulled the jacket around her.

"Sometimes I think my guardian is more my father now. He's here, and he said I was his own once. Now tell me something nice, please?"

Of all of the things for her to ask him at the moment. There wasn't much "nice" that he could dredge up just now. The only nice things about the past couple of days were Stardust (and he couldn't quite put into words why she was nice, just that she was Stardust), and the meal he had made.

"There hasn't been much nice." He murmured into her hair. "My superior officer gave me the week off, which is nice enough I guess. And I cooked something almost like what my mother used to cook, but—" and he wrinkled his nose at the faint smell of vomit emanating just a little bit away. "I'm not sure if you really want to think about food right now."

"Tell me please? Even food is better than thinking about how kriffing awful I feel."

"Mami cooked food with a lot of flavorings," and Cassian could taste her once-a-week chilaques , smell the mole that she would make, and feel the sticky sweet dough that he would help her roll out. "It was where she was from. It was so cold that the only way to warm up was to eat food that had taste and bite. None of the nonsense plain food that the Core and Mid Rim worlds make for everyone. Our people learned the secret of spice and flavorings—a little bit goes a long way, and good food makes you forget that life is hard."

"What was your world like? Will you cook some for me some day?" she interrupted.

"Some day," he didn't answer her question about his world. He didn't want to think any more about Fest or Mami.

'Well?" she demanded. "What did you make?"

"You know, for someone who was throwing up a moment ago, you're very curious about food."

"You cook!" she whined. "No one in my father's group really cooks, they all just slap things together to fuel missions. I only get tasty food when I can steal the credits for it!" Well, he reasoned, people had to do what they had to do to survive. He wasn't so naïve to assume that other rebel cells had it as good as the Alliance. Some of the leaders were just crazy fanatics, and some cells just didn't have the money for anything beyond basic rations. If stealing some credits here and there for food kept her healthy and happy, then he wasn't going to judge her for it. Besides, he'd seen her dreams. She would never steal from anyone who didn't work for the Empire.

"It wasn't really anything my mother cooked when she was alive," his meal paled in comparison to the feasts that Mami could make out of whatever was available, even if it was next to nothing before they had the farm. "It was just the flavorings she used."

"What kind of flavors? Don't bother telling me the names, don't know any." There was a hungry look in her eyes, and he didn't think it was from actually wanting food.

"She liked spicy the best. Said it warmed her up better than any heating unit because it was so sharp. But there's a smoky one that's round and made up of a few different flavors, and smoothes the sharp so it doesn't hurt so much." He could hear Mami telling him the same thing when he was eleven in the little farm kitchen. They had finished setting it up, finally, and she was showing how to make the dishes her Mami made. He wondered if she knew that some day she would never come back from the Rebellion and wanted to leave more than just her stories.

But that was not for now. Now wasn't time for him to feel bad. It was his fault Stardust was so sick from sitting in the cold water. He answered most of her questions, told her more about Mami's food and how much he loved making it. He spoke for what seemed like forever, until he felt her slump against him in a deep dreamless sleep. Carefully, he maneuvered them both until he lay on his side, and she curled into him. Now that Stardust was resting, there was nothing to distract him from the mission. Ghostly images waited at the edges of the meadow— the officer with a leer on his face and a bulge in his pants; the outline of the dingy room he was forced to service in. Cassian was sure that if he waited long enough, he would have smelt everything too. He clutched Stardust more closely to him and willed the images away. The meadow and beach were his sanctuary with Stardust; the taint from the last mission didn't belong there, not while she was with him.

Only the rustling grass and the lapping waves made any discernable noise. They seemed to blend with the rhythm of Stardust's deep breaths. He reveled in the beauty and peace of the place. It was difficult to stay angry and hurt in such a place. The next day on base he knew, would be difficult. He would wake up angry, tired, and hungry. But he would wake up, and wake up the next day, and the next.

A/N 1: *Cassian is 17, Jyn is 13

*Takes place 1-2 days after the events of the previous chapter

*Don't worry, this one is slightly fluffier

*Lullaby-Josh Groban and Lady Blacksmith Mambazo

A/N 2: *As always, thanks to DancingActress24 for her patience and awesome beta skills

*Thanks to everyone for sticking with this!


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 10: Fade Away

 _Four years._ Four years for one deep cover assignment within Imperial territory, with very occasional contact with the Alliance, and even then, just information drops. The thought of what that mission would entail boggled his mind: the creation of an entirely new identity, the knowledge that for almost four straight years, Cassian Andor could not exist except within the confines of his mind. Then there was the material cost of it all. One year of Junior Academy on Lothal and three years of learning at the Senior Imperial Academy on Carida would all involve uniforms, room and board, learning materials, and no small amount of bribery. He didn't even want to think about how Draven and Fulcrum convinced the council that a seventeen year old boy (not that he really was a boy, and hadn't been one since he was eleven) was capable of pulling off a deception of this scale.

"You called for me sirs?" He had asked as he walked into the now very familiar briefing room on the base. Somehow, it never mattered what base it happened to be on, every time he had a meeting with Draven and Fulcrum together, it was always in the briefing room. He nodded to Draven and Fulcrum, but kept an eye on the woman in white that sat between the two of them, and managed to not let his jaw drop to the floor once he realized who she was.

"Actually, I did. Sit, please. " Senator Mothma's voice was quiet, but still commanding.

"Ma'am," Cassian acknowledged as he sat down across from the three. She regarded him through clear blue eyes. "Your superiors went through a great deal of trouble to get approval for this mission from the Council. It's a plan that is brilliant in its simplicity and no one can deny the fact that we need the intelligence that this will provide."

Cassian could imagine the arguments that rippled through that meeting. He hadn't really had to go in front of the Council before—not officially anyways. Sometimes he sat in on the meetings as Draven's aide. For some reason, the man valued his opinion. The Council probably divided itself the way it always did: action vs. inaction. No need to guess which side Mothma was on. What she said next shocked the kriff out of him.

"Fulcrum has spoken quite highly of your abilities, and General Draven has also expressed his confidence in your abilities to the Council. I'm quite interested in seeing just who you are, Commander Andor—a fair thing to ask given that I am the one who will be funding your venture." Somehow, he really wasn't sure how, except that he didn't want to disappoint Draven, he kept the surprise off of his face. He hadn't even tried to speculate about the money trail, though he would have to before the assignment began—it was always best to know where money came from and where it went to minimize any potential weak points in a mission. At least he knew that it would be coming from an unimpeachable source.

"I am just a soldier, ma'am," he answered softly. He was no better and no worse than most who fought for freedom. The only difference really was that he started intelligence work much younger than most.

"There's more than that, I think," the Senator steepled her hands in front of her as she regarded him once more. "Your file says that you came to us quite young, with your mother, and she was lost some years ago. Tell me, why did you stay?" Cassian didn't need to look back at Draven and Fulcrum's impassive faces to know that he was on his own with this interrogation, gentle as it was. There was a pregnant pause as he tried to answer.

"I—I'm not sure," his brow furrowed. "I think because the people here are the only family I have left." He didn't dare look at Draven or Fulcrum, though he heard Draven's sharp intake of breath. Unbidden, images came to the front of his mind: throwing rocks at clone troopers in white because Papa and Mama said that they were bad people during whispered conversations in the kitchen while they thought he was sleeping. Papa falling after clone troopers opened fire at the protest on Carida, while he watched and screamed from inside the office building he had snuck into. Mama telling him goodbye on the farm on a dewy morning and never coming back. Draven, holding onto his shoulder as he cried at the kitchen table. Draven looking at him with something like pride in his eyes when he passed his tests in the field. Fulcrum looking at him with sad eyes every time she gave him another mission. Stardust watching the troopers in black kill her mother; how hard she had cried on the beach after. Something of those memories must have shown in his eyes. The Senator's face softened a little, and she gave a small, sad, smile.

Cassian shook himself back to the present. Right now, he had to focus on creating an imperial identity that wouldn't drive him insane with disgust. He scrolled through a list of common Mid and Outer Rim surnames on his datapad. The character of the boy he was supposed to become came through to him after hours of creating. By the end of it, he slipped into Joreth Sward—a moderately well off son of a merchant from the Elochar Sector, who held to notions of honor and order within the Empire. At least Sward wasn't someone who had to be despicable yet. Although after reading up on the training curriculum used by the junior and senior academies provided by one of Draven's sources, he was relatively sure that Willix would be rather despicable by necessity at the end of it. It was a heavy realization that he would have to become what he hated most, and it filled him with dread. Even posing as a boy prostitute servicing perverted Imperial officers was almost better. The prostitute was just trying to survive whatever way he could, while the cadet actually bought into the propaganda.

The chrono read 0300. He groaned and rubbed his fingers into his eyes. There was no need to run himself ragged right now; he had the next few days off to refine his back story. And then only a month before heading off to his "home world" with the appropriately and spliced records and settled in with his newfound family in a thoroughly middling (but up and coming) area of the planet before going to the academy. His mind wandered back to that café of his first mission as he methodically stacked things back onto his desk and crawled into his bed. The bitter scent of fresh ground and brewed caf would linger in his nose as he sipped his hot drink and he would be balancing a plate of a savory breakfast in his other hand. He would be walking towards a table full of other younger people, all of whom were smiling and making room for him. There would be the polite inane morning chatter before the conversation delved into the latest assignment from the robotics course and the lively debate about the best way to build to improve on a program. He would laugh with abandon and genuine amusement. But he would never have those things. The thought was as bitter as the caf in his daydream. He felt the rush of tears coming up, and in the privacy of his room, he let them fall.

Jyn opened her eyes and found herself in the meadow. She was relieved to be out somewhere green and fresh rather than in the stale recirculated air of Arhul's bunker. Her neck hurt and she stretched her legs before taking off on a short run while she waited for Star. She found that she liked learning how to splice information—it was somewhat like creating new puzzle pieces to fit into an existing picture. Learning how to fight with Saw was exciting and most certainly not boring, but there was something about coding and splicing that appealed to her. It was quiet and unobtrusive work, something that she had a knack for that most Partisans were too impatient to learn. Not that she didn't see fighting with the Commenor Underground, it just wasn't as flashy as she was used to. Useful as learning to splice was though, Jyn wanted to learn everything all at once so she could get back to Saw. She spotted Star sitting cross-legged in the sand, staring into the water and jogged over to him.

"You know, for someone who hates being cold, you have a thing for being near cold water," she greeted him as she dropped down next to him. He didn't say anything until she tapped him on the shoulder and dropped down next to him with a huff.

"Hmmm? Oh," he shook himself. Jyn sighed and dropped her head on his shoulder. She didn't mean anything by it—she sometimes did it with Saw when she knew they were alone and when he just needed someone there.

"What is it?" She thought he wasn't going to answer when words tumbled from his mouth, so quickly that she almost didn't catch any of it.

"The next mission they're sending me on. I'll be in so deep that I won't even be myself for a long time." His arm snaked around her shoulders, and she ignored the sudden fluttering inside of her.

"You're always yourself here," she pointed out, looking up at him. He cocked his head, considering it. It was true enough. Star and Stardust were facets of their secret selves that no one else knew. There was no room for lies in the meadow and beach.

"Yes, but," he drawled out taking a deep breath. "I won't have my name while I'm there. I'll have to slowly turn into something I hate and I can't even hold on to my name to tell myself that I'm not really that person." She remembered—his father's name, the surname he shared with his mother and the rest of his lost family.

"I know," she said. And Jyn knew. She hadn't been Jyn Erso since she was eight years old. With Saw, she was Jyn Gerrera, and much as she loved him, Jyn Gerrera wasn't really who she was at the core. And her mother and father had been Ersos. Stardust was a made up name that Papa had given her and that Star used. But deep in her mind, she was Jyn Erso, and every day, she struggled to remember that name and the parents of her early childhood. Briefly, she wondered how it would be to hear "Jyn Erso" tumble from Star's voice—or even just "Jyn"—just for once to have the dream become real. There was a familiar ache welling up inside of her and her breath caught just a little. Star looked at her with sad eyes and his mouth twitched a little to one side.

"You would," he said softly, and held her tighter. "Do you wish—" he paused and looked away from her. "Do you ever wish that this could be real?"

"Isn't it?" Jyn countered, a little hurt that by now, he thought that she wasn't real to him. "You're Star here, and Star is still you, as much as Stardust is still me no matter what other names I get called. You know Stardust, you know me, better than anyone in the galaxy, because everything here is real!"

"And what about when we wake up and everything about the beach and the meadow fades away?" his voice quivered as he turned to look at her, and she knew that he was more afraid of whatever was coming than whatever had already happened. She took his hands into hers and looked down at them. Small ones against his large ones, both scarred and calloused. She wanted to scoff at how utterly childlike they looked against his, because the last thing she wanted to see was how little she was compared to him.

"Help me remember?" he pleaded with her.

"Just come back here," she whispered, looking back into his eyes. "I don't know who you are out there, but I know who you are here, just like you know me."

*Cassian is 17, Jyn is 13 *Takes place immediately after the previous chapter *Chapter song: Rangers by A Fine Frenzy *waves sheepishly* Hi! I'm back! Sort of. I apologize for how long it took for me to post this...it's actually been ready since the end of November! All I can say is that life with two kids under 4 is keeping me very busy, especially during cold and flu and holiday season. I don't know what kind of posting schedule I can honestly stick to, but please be assured that I will still be posting! I LOVE you all and thank you for sticking with this! As always, huge thank you to DancingActress24 for the betawork! 


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